<p>Hi! I'm a rising senior and I am planning to apply to the following colleges: Stanford, Yale, Cornell, North Carolina at Chapel Hill (my safety school), Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and MIT. How would you rate them based on academics (I am seriously considering majoring in computer science), location and weather, kind students and professors, and overall impression? Thanks!</p>
<p>Are you a North Carolina resident? UNC isn’t a safety for OOS and may only be a safety for in state if you have high scores and GPA</p>
<p>For undergraduate Computer Science the list is as follows:
- CMU
- Everybody else</p>
<p>@soze:</p>
<p>LOL. In terms of opportunities after graduation, Stanford is probably better while Cal, MIT, Cornell, as well as UIUC are just as good as CMU.</p>
<p>BTW, I’m a CS grad but I didn’t attend any of these schools.</p>
<p>CMU is in an area of Pittsburgh called Oakland. It’s a nice neighborhood overlooking one of the three rivers that Pittsburgh is built around. Pittsburgh is a city on the mend. It has a great major league sports atmosphere, as well as several good D1 college sports teams. CMU abuts UPitt, and it’s not far from Duquesne University. UPitt has a major research hospital and supports a lot of undergraduate research. There’s a terrific natural history museum, and the official Andy Warhol museum (he was a native of the city). Lots to do and lots of great ethnic foods, some native to Pittsburgh. Pitt students have free bus passes, and I think CMU students do as well. The weather is cold and wet in winter and hot and humid in summer, but the extremes aren’t as bad as say Rochester to the north or William & Mary to the south. CMU doesn’t have the finest architecture; you have to like sand yellow brick buildings of 2 and 3 floors. They surround a long central quad with lots of open space and green lawns. The classroom buildings I saw are quite modern and high rise concrete. I never bother with dorms when I’m visiting. They were completing a Bill Gates CS Center when I was there; it should be in use now. For a tech school, CSU has done a good deal of work to raise the profiles of their humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. It had what looked like a lively theater and visual arts program, and the latter is frequently paired with expertise in CS, of course. The outdoor sports facilities I saw were appropriate for the kind and size of school but they won’t blow you away. Lots of nerdy student touches. There’s a solar heated spa, for instance. There’s a beautiful semi-arts & crafts student center that I really liked. A bit of a hodgepodge architecturally. I saw it six years ago with my S. We liked Pittsburgh enough that my D is going to Pitt.</p>
<p>Read <a href=“Before you ask which colleges to apply to, please consider - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1621234-before-you-ask-which-colleges-to-apply-to-please-consider-p1.html</a> , particularly point 1.</p>
<p>The only question I can answer is the one about which schools have the best weather. That would be Stanford and UC Berkeley. </p>
<p>More importantly, you can’t have UNC be your only safety school! Get some more safeties on your list, and make sure they are financial safeties as well as academic safeties.</p>
<p>An actual safety is one where you have a 100% chance of admission and 100% chance of affordability. Ideally, your list should contain at least one such school.</p>
<p>Some students may only be able to find near-safeties with a 95-99% chance of admission with an affordable price. If you do not have any 100% safeties, you need to have several near-safeties to make the chance of a shut-out very low.</p>
<p>Or you are OK with either a CC or a gap year.</p>
<p>If you are looking to head to Silicon Valley, many, many students do just fine in CS by going to schools like Santa Clara or San Jose State. Local recruiting helps, as most SV companies are reluctant to pay for moving expenses, since the local talent pool is so large. Those might be solid safeties, though coming from OOS, maybe not.</p>
<p>FWIW, Santa Clara offers EA, so if you can afford it, it makes a great safety. If S decides to go the computer route in 4 years, I’d definitely have him apply EA, though that seems unlikely now, but rising 8th grader to rising senior is a lot of real estate.</p>
<p>I see from your other posts, that you’re from Georgia? You had said previously that UGA was your safety school. In any case, UNC-CH is NOT a safety school for you, even with the great stats you posted. Keep UGA as a safety. What’s wrong with Georgia Tech (I’m not a CS person)?</p>
<p>@SlackerMomMD I am definitely still keeping my eyes open for Georgia Tech. It really does have great rankings. I’m also interested in UGA and Agnes Scott College as my safety possibilities.</p>
<p>Thanks all for the input. I realized NC at Chapel Hill is NOT a safety school so now I’m considering UGA and/or Agnes Scott College as my safety(s). I’m also considering Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>Even though Reed is in Portland there will be lots of outdoors opportunities in that area. Also Reed has a ski cabin on Mt Hood.</p>